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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
One verse is printed in blackletter, and that text is
enclosed by plus signs (+blackletter+).
THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY
[Illustration: THE DARK ENTRY, CANTERBURY, FROM THE GREEN COURT.
"_A long narrow vaulted passage, paved with flagstones,
vulgarly known by the name of the 'Dark Entry.'_"
_The Legend of "Nell Cook."_
_Frontispiece._]
THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY
Literary Landmarks of the "Ingoldsby Legends"
by
CHARLES G. HARPER
Author of "The Brighton Road," "The Portsmouth Road,"
"The Dover Road," "The Bath Road," "The Exeter Road,"
"The Great North Road," "The Norwich Road," "The
Holyhead Road," "The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn
Road," and "Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore"
[Illustration: Woman on broomstick]
Illustrated by the Author
London
Adam & Charles Black
1904
PREFACE [Illustration: Man on broomstick]
_"INGOLDSBY" has always been of that comparatively small number of
authors who command a personal interest and affection. Reading the
"LEGENDS" you cannot choose but see that when he sat down, often
at the midnight hour, to dash off the fun and frolic that came so
readily to his mind, it was a part of himself that appeared upon the
page. He did not and could not, when he wrote for publication under a
pseudonym, be other than himself, and did not self-consciously draw a
veil of style around him and speak, a cloaked figure lacking ordinary
human attributes, or as other than a man of the world. He claimed no
sacerdotal privileges, and we know, from the published "_Life and
Letters_" by his son, that he was in his life and intimacies, as the
Reverend R. H. Barham, the same genial wit and humorist he appeared
as "Tom Ingoldsby." He must, therefore, have been a likeable man,
and those who knew him were fortunate persons. The next best thing to
knowing him is to know something of the Ingoldsby Country, that corner
of Kent where he was born and whose legends he has put to such splendid
literary uses. The "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS" have so long since become a
classic that it is indeed somewhat surprising that no literary pilgrim,
for love of their author and interest in his career, has before this
traced the landmarks of his storied district._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY.
_January, 1904._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. BARHAM: THE AUTHOR OF THE _INGOLDSBY LEGENDS_ 7
III. CANTERBURY 28
IV. THE CATHEDRAL: THE MURDER OF BECKET 41
V. TAPPINGTON HALL 63
VI. ROMNEY MARSH 77
VII. ROMNEY MARSH (_continued_) 98
VIII. OLD AND NEW ROMNEY, AND DYMCHURCH 110
IX. HYTHE AND FOLKESTONE 124
X. FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD 143
XI. FROM HYTHE TO ASHFORD (_continued_) 159
XII. THE BACK OF BEYOND 165
XIII. THE BACK OF BEYOND (_continued_) 181
XIV. THE COASTWISE ROAD: FOLKESTONE TO
DOVER AND SANDWICH 192
XV. SANDWICH TO THE VILLE OF SARRE 208
XVI. SARRE AND RECULVER TO CANTERBURY 222
XVII. THE ISLE OF SHEPPEY 233
XVIII. SOME OUTLYING INGOLDSBY LANDMARKS 257
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The "Dark Entry," Canterbury, From the Green Court _Frontispiece_
Sketch Map: The Ingoldsby Country 5
"Tom Ingoldsby:" the Rev. Richard Harris Barham 13
No. 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury _Facing_ 14
St. Mary Magdalene, Burgate Street, Canterbury 15
Westwell 16
The Hall, No. 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury _Facing_ 16
The Barham Coat-of-Arms 18
No. 4, St. Paul's Churchyard 22
Amen Corner, where Barham died.... 24
Ruins of St. Mary Magdalene, after the Fire of
December 1886 26
Canterbury Castle 32
The Dane John, Canterbury 34
The Dark Entry 37
" " " 38
"The Martyrdom," Canterbury Cathedral 52
The Vale of Barham 65
The "Eagle Gates," Broome Park 67
Broome Park, the Real Original of Tappington
Hall _Facing_ 68
Tappington, from the Folkestone Road 69
Denton _Facing_ 70
Denton Church and Court 71
Tappington Hall 73
The "Merchant's-Mark" of Thomas Marsh of Marston 74
Tappington Hall: Night _Facing_ 74
Warehorne 79
A Sundial, Warehorne Church 81
Warehorne 82
The Royal Military Canal at Warehorne 84
Snargate 100
Brookland 102
Ivychurch 104
Newchurch, on Romney Marsh: "This recondite
region; this fifth quarter of the globe" 105
Old Romney 111
New Romney 116
A Martello Tower 119
Dymchurch Wall 121
" " 122
The "Smugglers' Nest," Hythe 127
Hythe, from the Road to Sandgate 128
Folkestone 132
The Stade, Folkestone 135
Folkestone Harbour 137
Folkestone in 1830. _After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._
_Facing_ 140
Romney Marsh, from Lympne " 144
Lympne Castle 146
A Cottage Tablet, Lympne 147
A Kentish Farm 148
The Ruined Chapel, Court-at-Street 149
An Old Sundial, Aldington 151
Aldington 154
Cobb's Hall 159
Aldington Knoll 160
Bilsington Woods 161
Bilsington Priory 162
Bilsington Church 163
Orlestone Hill 164
Saltwood Castle 169
Westenhanger House 175
Lyminge 182
Lyminge Church 183
Old Houses at Elham 185
Acryse 187
The Preceptory, Swingfield Minnis 190
The "Lone Tree" 197
East Langdon 199
"Marston Hall" 200
The "Three Horseshoes," Great Mongeham 201
St. Peter's, Sandwich 205
The Barbican, Sandwich 209
Sandwich, from Great Stonar 210
Richborough, and the Kentish Coast-line towards Ramsgate 213
The Smuggler's Leap 215
Monkton 217
" 218
The "Ville of Sarre" 220
Chislett 223
Reculver 225
Fordwich 228
Fordwich Town Hall 230
Sturry 232
The Devil's Footprint 234
Minster-in-Sheppey 243
Tomb of Sir Robert de Shurland 245
The Horse-vane, Minster-in-Sheppey 246
The Soul, from a Monument in Minster-in-Sheppey Church 249
The Estuary of the Medway, from the Road near
Minster-in-Sheppey 251
Shurland Castle 253
Netley Abbey 261
Salisbury Plain: where the Lavington Road branches off
to the left from the one to Devizes 266
[Illustration: The Ingoldsby Country]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The present writer foregathered a little while since with a man who had
been to the uttermost parts of the earth. He had just returned from
Australia, and was casually met on what the vulgar call the "Tuppenny
Tube," travelling from the Bank to Shepherd's Bush. It was a humorous
anti-climax to all those other journeys, but that is not the point here
to be made. He was full, as might have been expected, of tales strange
and curious of those outposts of civilisation he had visited, and of
legends of places--whose names generally ended with two gulps and a
click--where civilisation was an unknown quantity. But to this man, who
had been everywhere and elsewhere, who had crossed the Dark Continent
when it was still dark, England, his native land, was largely a sealed
book. Even as one spoke with him it could be perceived how perfect an
exemplar he was of many globe-trotting Britons who roam the world and
can talk to you at first hand of Bulawayo or the Australian bush, but
are instantly nonplussed if the subject of rural England be broached.
When he was done talking of places with savage and
infinitely-repetitive names, composed of fantastically-arranged
vowels, with never a consonant to consort with them, he was asked if
he knew Kent. "Kent?" he repeated, in Jingle-like fashion, "why, yes.
Canterbury Cathedral, hop-gardens, Charles Dickens, Rochester, Dover,
and--and all that," he concluded, with a vague sweep of his arm. "Run
through it on y'r way to Paris," he added, in an explanatory way. And
that was all he knew of Kent: a place you run through, on the way to
somewhere else! a country observed from fleeting and not very attentive
glances obtained from a railway-carriage window! Such glances furnished
him fully forth in all he had cared to know of the Garden of England!
Not that one fully subscribes to that familiar epithet of praise, which
must have originally been given by a Cockney who knew no better. Who
that ever has sojourned in the west, and has known lovely Devon, would
for a moment give Kent that pride of place? Now, if it were called the
"Market Garden of England----!" What?
But this is not to say that Kent is not very beautiful; only it is not
Devon. I do not pillory Kent because it is not something else, and
would by no means contemn its chalky soil because of any affection for
the good red earth of that other shire. Kent has its lovable qualities,
and when you have eliminated the thronging tramps, the paper and other
factories, the objectionable hop-pickers, the beanfeasters, and the
multitudinous yahoos who people its nearer Cockneyfied districts, there
is a very considerable residuum of exquisite country. The elimination
of all those items would be what the slangy term a "big order"; but
the tourist who knows, and even the tourist who does not actually
_know_, but can infer and deduce, need never lose himself in the Kent
of commerce and blackguardism. He seeks out, and by instinct finds,
the best; and, having found the best that Kent affords, is ready to
declare that it is hard to beat. It is, for example, impossible to
match, even in Devon, the beauty of that fertile fruit and hop-bearing
belt of country which begins at Newington, a few miles below Chatham,
and continues beside the Dover Road, past Teynham and Faversham, and
on to Canterbury. It is a beauty that appeals alike and at once to the
artist and the man with carnal appetites and fleshly longings; for,
once off the dusty high-road, it is a constant succession of orchards
and hop-gardens, wherein it is pleasant to lie on sunny afternoons
in the dappled shade of the apple, pear, or cherry-trees, with the
swede-eating sheep for sole companions, and the noise of the toilsome
world coming restfully over the hedgerows.
It _is_ a noisy and a toilsome world. There goes the roar of the big
guns down at the Medway forts; the clear note of the bugles sings
up faintly--like an anthem from amid a naughty nest of vipers--out
of Chatham and New Brompton (we are being duly taken care of!); the
whistling and rushing of the railway trains are never still, and you
can hear that holiday world which takes its vacation strenuously,
"pip-pipping" on cycles, "poop-pooping" on motor-cars, and playing the
yearnful concertina on the passing break like anything, t'other side
of the merciful hedge. Even if you could not hear them, the signs of
their passing would be evident in the cloud of chalk-dust which, like
the pillar of cloud by day that guided the Children of Israel, marks
their route. But the Land of Promise sought by those pilgrims, at such
speed, is not ours. How should it be? Theirs is ever the Next Place;
ours is Here. Theirs is the Promise without fruition; ours is granted
to the full, and Now, wherever we be. That is if we be indeed wise in
our generation, and content with the happy moment. One understands that
same happy moment, here and now, to be passed in the consumption of
ripe cherries out of a cool cabbage-leaf, in the shade of the boughs
that bore them. This is one way in which beauteous Kent appeals, as we
have said, to the carnal man, who perceives that if indeed Devonshire
cream be good, equally good are the kindly fruits of Kent.
If Kent be essentially the Market Garden of England, rather than
pre-eminently the Garden in the picturesque sense, certainly this
country yields to none other in historic or literary interest.
That coast where Cæsar and Augustine, easily first among the great
personages of history, landed; this fertile county which contains the
Metropolitan Cathedral of the Church of England; the neighbourhood of
Rochester and Maidstone, linked with the literary activities of Charles
Dickens, must needs hold the affections of Englishmen, irrespective of
the physical and æsthetic attractions of scenery. But there is another
great literary figure connected with Kent, both by birth and by reason
of his having exploited many of its rural legends in his merry verse.
Richard Harris Barham was born at Canterbury, and in his _Ingoldsby
Legends_ created an Ingoldsby Country, which he had already peopled
with many notable characters before death cut him off in his prime.
The capital of the Ingoldsby Country is Canterbury; its very heart and
core is comprised within the district to the east of a line drawn
due south from Whitstable to Canterbury, Denton, and Hythe; and its
frontiers make an indeterminate line to the west, beyond Romney Marsh
and Ashford. The whole north coast of Kent, including Sheppey, the
Swale, and the littoral of the Thames and Medway, is part and parcel
of Ingoldsby Land, whose isolated and far-off dependencies are found
at Shrewsbury, the scene of "Bloudie Jack"; or Salisbury Plain, where
the "Dead Drummer" is located; at Wayland Wood, near Wymondham, in
Norfolk, where the legend of the "Babes in the Wood" belongs; and at
Netley Abbey, the scene of a fine poem. London, too, has its Ingoldsby
associations, duly set forth in these pages.
[Illustration: Sketch Map: The Ingoldsby Country]